The Guessing Path

The Guessing Path, by Esther Veltheim

It took
many years of people telling me "you must read Marion Woodman's Addiction to Perfection!" before I
actually read the book. Like any addict I dismissed these well meaning friends
and the notion that I could have any such addiction. After all, I was well
aware of how totally imperfect I was!

It is
not that I didn't buy Marion Woodman's book. I bought it several times in fact,
but somehow always ended up giving it away before I read it. Some twenty years
after I first heard of it I sat down and read it, but its messages stayed
swirling around on the surface of my psyche and really couldn't penetrate. The
addiction was so deep and so unconscious; a true addiction.

Only in
very recent times has it hit me what everyone was seeing in me that I could
not. The word perfection had thrown
me because it described a goal I was in total denial of aiming for. But one
morning, after a night of strange dreams, I woke up and was struck by the
stream of thoughts that were coming to me. One after another I watched them,
horrified to see the persistence of so many reprimands. They were not new to me. On the
contrary, I was used to the mind's barrage of reprimands. I had just never,
consciously, experienced the fear that fuelled them. I had never, consciously,
seen the simple message that every single reprimand held.... "You must do nothing wrong!"

As I
lay there that morning, these words reverberated inside my body and all I could
do was sob like a little child. And that, really, was exactly who was sobbing,
the tiny, stalwart girl in me who my entire life had been terrified of doing
something wrong. That is not to say I had gone out of my way to be good. On the
contrary, I spent the first half of my life priding myself on being a rebel. It
was the safest form of strength the little girl could find. But on that
morning, the adult me was finally getting in touch with how powerfully this
little girl's fears were still coloring her life.

And as
I lay there watching and feeling more deeply I saw what was once a fearful
vulnerable little girl in me begin to transform. Her little face became
serious, her fists clenched, her mind became determined. And I watched her as
she took one determined step after another. Sad but determined, she began to
tread the Guessing Path.....

"What
is Mummy really feeling?" "Why does Daddy talk that way?" "What can I do to
make everyone feel better?" "What can I do to stop him?" "What can I do to stop
her?" "How can I help?" "What have I done wrong? What am I doing wrong?!" "What
is wrong with me?!"

And
with everything inside her telling her that, "Everything wrong is my fault!"
each step down the Guessing Path became more determined. And with every step,
the conviction deepened, that I was fundamentally incapable of doing anything
really right, useful, helpful, worthwhile or good.

As I
lay there that morning, I saw the Guessing Path and my journey along it
stretching out the length of my life. Every single step of the way I knew with
less and less doubt that "There is something wrong with me!"

"What
am I doing wrong?" "What have I done wrong?" "Would it be wrong to do this,
wrong to say that?" "Oh my goodness, I should never have done that!" "It's my
fault!" "It's all my fault!"

The
further I travelled along the Guessing Path the more my doubts about myselfwere silenced. The Guessing Path was working its
magic and I knew with more and more certainty "There is something
fundamentally, irreparably so wrong with me!"

Lying
there, watching this journey was the first time the adult me truly felt
compassion for that little girl. She was tiny, maybe four or five years old
when she took that first step. Such a lively, natural, radiant little girl,
finally too overwhelmed by feelings of responsibility for the pain she saw
around her. She just knew it was all up to her. It was her responsibility to
mend everything broken that she saw around her. She was to blame, after all!

Somehow,
as I finally began to understand what the
addiction to perfection meant and how it had come about in me, the reprimands
began to die down. They are still not fully gone. When the playful, wonderfully
spontaneous little girl inside me is dismissed in any way, the little girl who
grew up reprimanding herself takes over. The adult becomes beset with doubts;
guessing, guessing, guessing. But now I notice the addiction more quickly.
Gradually, step-by-step I feel closer to that little girl who preceded the
Guessing Path.

Perhaps,
the adult me is finally turning her back on the goal of perfection, tracing her
way back along the Guessing Path. How many more steps? Will I ever be able to
jump off? Or, perhaps, it is simply that when there is no need to become
anything at all anymore the Guessing Path will disappear. Who knows? I try not
to guess.

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